Francis rose to his feet and moved towards the door. Mary ran upstairs again, and Gertrude put the parrot's cloth over his cage because he was beginning to scream. Came a ring at the door, and presently Leedham appeared with his hair blown into his eyes and his face very pale and his teeth chattering. He turned to his father and said: "Come!" Mrs. Folyat fainted. Francis turned sick at heart and went out into the passage. The front door was open and the gas was flickering in the wind, so that it was very dark. There were two men holding a little white bundle between them. The boy James had been blown from the roof and they had found him on the pavement below. He was quite cold, and it was impossible to tell how long he had been there. The house was full of whisperings and the guests withdrew, stealing away like ghosts. Leedham stayed to look after his mother. They carried the boy upstairs and laid his poor broken body on the bed in Mary's room, and Francis fumbled out and along the street to beg the doctor to come at once. There was nothing to be done. Thinking was no use. Tears seemed foolish. It was only mechanically that Francis turned to his God and said, "Thy Will be done." The boy was buried in the grim cemetery over by the canal. The parishioners clubbed together and erected a little marble cross above his grave. They wanted to express their sympathy, and the very poor sent pathetic little wreaths of ivy and hideous wax monstrosities and horrible crosses of iron filagree. The beauty and charm of the boy were discovered after he was dead, and for a little while the house in Fern Square was a sort of temple in his honour. His belongings were gathered together and partitioned, and Leedham took with him to Rio de Janeiro his little brother's christening mug and spoon. Mrs. Folyat was prostrate with grief, and the shock to her nerves made her for a long time a valetudinarian. She was just recovering when there came the crowning act of brutality. Flynn was silenced for a space, but it was strangely whispered among his followers that in St. Paul's mass was being said and candles lit for the dead. Francis had encouraged the more devout among his parishioners to use the church for private meditation and prayer. He himself, in his grief, spent many hours there, and this found interpretation in the report that he was instituting the confessional. Flynn did not stop to examine the accuracy or probability of the rumour but hurled thunderbolts. A gang of roughs set on Frederic one day, and he came home with his clothes torn and mucked and his face bloody. Urged by his wife, and much against his own inclination, Francis wrote to Flynn and begged him to confine his attentions to himself. He said: "I am a priest, but I am proud, and if there is to be suffering as the consequence of my actions I would rather bear it on my own shoulders." Henceforth Francis was known as the Proud Priest.